Robin Hood: The Movie Game

There’s been a lot of taking from the poor to give to the rich recently: banks appear to be stealing everyone’s money.

It’s a good time for the classic legend of Robin Hood to reappear on movie screens and mobiles then. But is the latest movie tie-in offering from EA Mobile rich in its execution or just a bit poor?

Being a movie tie-in of a film not yet released in the cinemas, I’m not going to spoil the plot for you, other than to say ‘Yes, it has one’ and ‘No, it is nothing like the one with Kevin Costner’.

What it essentially boils down to though is that Robin (of ‘Hood’ fame) has to use his bow and sword to sneak, fight and steal across 14 large, identical looking forests, of which only a few are based near Nottingham.

Actually, that’s slightly unfair as sometimes it’s raining and occasionally you get to play a shooting mini-game that feels like it’s been taken from a long-lost 80s Tiger LCD handheld, complete with dodgy controls and rubbish animation.

For the most part though, RHTMG is an isometric action-adventure with smatterings of action and a whole lot of exploring.

This is mainly because the levels are huge, with multiple objectives and hidden collectables as well as secondary objectives to find and complete.

It certainly makes a nice change from movie tie-in games that skirt through key moments and last half an hour at most.

Considering how large the levels are the inclusion of a compass that points towards your next objective is a welcome inclusion, but I couldn’t help feeling that a map would have been more useful. Especially when some levels closely resemble a hedge-maze.

Still, the game's more explorative approach is a welcome departure from the usual action-platform movie tie-ins we receive on mobile.

Unfortunately while the adventure part of the game is good fun, the action is lacklustre to say the least.

Robin has the option of confronting enemies with either sword, bow or avoiding them entirely by sneaking.

The first option available to the player, swordplay, is easily the worst of the three as it consists of madly hammering the ‘5’ key while Robin flails around like a hyperactive child holding a stick.

Once he has a bow in hand things get slightly better.

The shooting system in RHTOMG works a little like the system from Gameloft’s Sherlock Holmes where a crosshair decreases in size over your target to represent the power of the shot. Only now you hold the button down awkwardly to build up power and often find the arrow misses for no good reason.

You could in theory sneak past the opposition by pressing the ‘0’ key and carefully picking your way through those red cones everyone in stealth games like to wear. But as killing enemies rewards you with tons of cash and health, there really isn’t much point to it.

RHTOMG isn’t a bad game by any means, despite the often dull combat.

The graphics and animation have a polished sheen and the additional objectives for each level add an interesting non-linear approach to each challenge.

It’s just that, while it steals a host of rich ideas from other games, the execution of them is often poor.